At the unguarded ship, both men climbed the gangway, and Hardberger found the first mate, a heavy-set Panamanian, who agreed to cooperate.
The Patric M's crew, which had not been replaced by the Peruvian company, was assembled in the mess for a briefing. Everyone signed on to the plan.
Later in the evening, the crew cut the ship's lines from the deck. The main engine came to life with a few deep thumps.
Proceeding at "dead slow ahead," Hardberger steered the 340-foot cargo ship past a naval base and through the narrow harbor entrance.
En route to Aruba, Hardberger said, he received a radio message saying Venezuela had notified Interpol -- the global police agency -- that the ship had departed without permission.
He soon found an isolated anchorage off the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. The crew ground off the original name and identification numbers that are stamped into the steel of every cargo ship when it is built.
All the Patric M's documents -- plans, ledgers, log books and certifications -- were copied and altered to reflect its new name. The originals were destroyed, including its Panamanian registration forms.
Then, Hardberger said, he found a country willing to register stateless vessels, no questions asked. He declined to name the country, but there were only a few at the time, such as Honduras, Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands. International regulatory agencies have since banned the practice.
About a year after acquiring its new identity, the Patric M was sold by Morgan Price.
"International waters," Hardberger said, "are worse than the Wild West. In many ways, there is little or no opportunity to avenge the wrongs people have done to you."
For the last 3 1/2 years, Hardberger has operated Vessel Extractions with Michael L. Bono, an admiralty law attorney and one of his former high school students.
BEFORE repossessing a ship, they make sure the vessel has been seized illegally and the claims filed against it are fraudulent.
If negotiations and legal methods fail, the company will proceed with an extraction, a step that might include payments to local officials if a nation's government is corrupt.
Those payments, Hardberger said, are made under exceptions in the federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from bribing foreign officials to retain or obtain business.
